Our Wedding day

Wow so Rob and I have now been married for 8 months and 3 days! It seems like so much longer, but definitely not in a bad way. It really is nice to find a great person to share your life! I have been meaning to write this for a long time now.

So our wedding day.... Lots and lots of things went wrong, but hey I am taking that as we will have a long lasting marriage. When they say, no one notices when things go wrong it is really true. Our flowers weren't the exact color I was desiring, but no one knew that (not even the groom). It turned out beautifully anyway. Our rental company forgot to bring a cord for the music, so luckily my new brother in law had one in his car, so our wedding started about 30 minutes late. Everyone thought it was me running late... Nope, the girls and I were at the hotel next door drinking, waiting for the word to say we could start on over to Kiener Plaza.

We choose Kiener Plaza for a couple of reasons. One because it is such a great back drop, two because we couldn't afford our first choice, and three because it was only $300 to rent out the plaza. I am still okay with this decision even if there were some complications. You would think if you paid money to be in the public park the city would make sure it was available to you. We had to kick people out from swimming in the fountains, a bum was digging through the trash during the ceremony, a lot of onlookers are in our pictures, other wedding parties are trying to take pictures in the same location... It was interesting, none the least. However, Rob and I didn't know any of it was going on at the time and it makes for great stories now.

The ceremony was okay. Our officiant's microphone was too close to the waterfall, so I think a lot of people couldn't hear him. Which in our minds was probably a good thing. We didn't so much care for our officiant. Rob's family is catholic and my family is baptist, so we decided to go the non denominational route. I think what our officiant didn't understand was even though we weren't having a church wedding, I still wanted to hear all the things you do in normal weddings. Like to have and to hold, from this day forward... Our officiant had made up his own vows and i guess he was pretty proud of them, because when we asked to change it back to the traditional vows he got a little upset. He was also upset when we wanted to take out the words "there will be betrayal" and other items, but he agreed. However during the wedding, there were all those words we asked not to be there!! ERR! We didn't want the betrayal said during our wedding day and I don't who would!! So I hope no one heard him.

Our overall experience with our officiant, was not really a pleasant one. He was late getting us the text; I had to send him a reminder email. Then when we received the text, he said something like "Then Lori's son goes up and kisses Rob cheek", umm?? Confused?? When did I have a son? I know mistakes happen, but he should probably work on his cut and paste names editing. Okay, so I know I sound really negative on this guy, so the best part of him being our officiant is he had a great idea for the unity ceremony!! We had an outdoor wedding, so candles were out, we weren't really hip on the whole sand idea and not sure what to do. So he did step up with a great idea. Rob had a glass of red wine and I had a glass of white wine, then we poured them into a chalice together and then we drink from it. They key is to buy to wines that go well together, we used a bordeaux and mascoto d'asti. It was a really cute thing he did (I hope everyone heard this part!). If anyone would like the text I would be happy to send it to you.

Next was wedding pictures. I was looking everywhere for my Mom, but what I didn't know is it was so hot outside my Mom had gotten sick right before I walked down the aisle. So after the ceremony she headed next door to the hotel to relax for a bit, so unfortunately she missed the whole ceremony. I guess that leads to the part I forgot to mention..... The HEAT! Oh my was it hot. It was 108 degree heat index. I am almost fainted during pictures, so I had to climb into the limo while some of the groomsmen ran and got me some Hooters! Yep I ate Hooters on our wedding day. We went back out and took more pictures. Our wedding photographer was amazing!! Derek Cadzow with Love and Life Photography. Since it was so hot outside we did not get to take all the pictures we wanted to and since the wedding started late we also wanted to take advantage of the time left on the limo. We just drove around for awhile, drank and had a good time with our wedding party! It was a lot of fun! We have great friends and family!

So the reception... As many as you know the river unseasonably flooded and we did not get to have our wedding reception on the riverboat. I cannot say enough nice things about Amanda at the Gateway Riverboat!! She was amazing!! They were very responsive and took very good care of us. They even gave us the correct expectations of what would happen if the river did flood.... They called me that Monday morning to let me know it wasn't going to be possible, I cried and we moved on to the next plans. They negotiated a few locations for us and we set up appointments on Monday evening to look at them. One was the Drury Inn and the other was Kemoll's. We stopped by the Drury in first and their wedding coordinator was very good at her job. Then we checked out Kemoll's and fell in love!!! I mean love!!! It was perfect!! Rob and I are not normal by any means and a hotel wedding reception was not going to work for us. It did cost a lil bit more to move the wedding reception to Kemoll's but they really worked with us and made our wedding day so amazing. Tiffany, our wedding coordinator at Kemoll's did a great job. They made the place so beautiful. The food was freaking amazing!!!!!! We can't wait to go back for all of our special occasions. Kemoll's had 4 days to put together our entire wedding reception and they nailed everything! We cannot thank them enough. Yes the air conditioning randomly went out right before the wedding party walked out, but they brought in these discreet stand up units. You really didn't notice unless you were on the dance floor. (Which we were most of the night)

Speaking of dance floors!! Our Wedding DJ was great. He played great dinner music and then when it was time to party, TKO DJs rocked the music! I mean with a crazy couple like us who still walk into their wedding reception to I'm on a Boat, even when your reception is no longer on a boat... (Don't worry it was the edited version, but not so much later in the night.

Dessert?? Well I am not a big cake person unless it has lots of flavor. Rob and I tried out several different places and finally decided upon the Black Forest Cake from the Bonne Bouche in Creve Coeur, MO. If you have not had this cake, you definitely need to try it!! Unfortunately on our wedding day our cake had a random coffee flavor in it :(! It kind of ruined the cake for us, especially since I don't like coffee!! I never told them, because I think the owner would feel horrible to know this happened. We still eat there and buy cakes from there; it really is a great place. We did not just have wedding cake though we had Cold Stone Creamery at our wedding!! I think it was all of our guests favorite part! We had so many comments about it after wards. We had three ice cream flavors, and 6 mix ins. They made each of guests their own individual ice cream. It was so much fun, everyone loved it and I highly recommend it to everyone!!

Overall, I got to marry the greatest man on earth!! (I may be a bit biased.) If it weren't for our wedding coordinator (which I disliked so much I didn't mention her) and our officiant, everyone made sure we had a great day and we did! At the end of the day we so happy with everything!  If you would like to check out our wedding photos check out our site on Shutterfly.http://robandlori.shutterfly.com/